El Zonte, El Salvador
Las Flores, El Salvador
Punta Mango, El Salvador
Forgive the absence; I went camping at Punta Mango and decided not to bring my laptop. Mostly because I didn’t want to worry about it while out there, but also because I wanted to test a break; I bruised my diaphragm from surfing (my current diagnosis) which is a result of overuse. Brains are the same way, and although I don’t think the writing parts of my brain are being overused, I do think this was a good opportunity to test what a break would do. Like I say, the rest days are built in, and this seemed to have done me well. I’ve noticed the last two nights that my mind is racing before I go to sleep. Not in a bad way, but in a way that’s like I want to think just for its own sake and haven’t had the chance to all day. Perhaps that’s what writing has become; a venue for thinking in any way I want because that’s something I just like to do.
The journey actually begins here in Zonte the night before a 4am departure. The Father apparently has a sauna and invited me, the Son, the friend who was driving me to Mango, plus some other people to hop in it that night. It was an airtight mud-walled room with a wood stove. It worked so well that by the end of each 15-minute session the people lying on the floor were squelching in pools of sweat. Someone suggested we om to make it through the final minutes, and it was a uniting experience. Everyone vibrated on different frequencies that aggregated into one hum that in my mind meshed with the thickness of the air such that I was hearing the humidity and feeling the sounds. What I love about saunas is that they push your mind into a corner that it must learn to withstand, and while I was in there thinking about how despite how miserable everyone was we refused to acknowledge it, to moan or complain, or to scream in agony. It felt exactly like life, that existence is just one big sauna compressing and burning us forever and we have all found a way to agree that it’s best left unaddressed and we should just go on trying to find ways to ignore this fact. In one such way I sat through ten whole minutes of silence until someone mumbled about how hot it was to which I said “It’s like a sauna in here,” and literally everyone laughed. All we’re looking for are ways to not think about how this will never end.
And so was the context with which I approached my step back in time to a world where it felt like every moment was dragged and stretched until the edges between them were smoothed into one amber blob. The days and nights were long as could be and it didn’t matter; not because of 100mph hedonistic escapism but because the base layer of existence had curated itself to be so pleasant that it was just fine to watch the ocean all day. I would lie in a hammock out on the edge of the point looking farther into the east at an even deeper unknown that was so untouched that only the birds, dolphins, and God observed the passage of time as it showed its presence on the muddy cliffs and smoothed riverstones. It was impossible to ignore how long this had gone on before us without caring that there was nothing to witness the sheer grating stillness. Everything was sun-bleached and caked until time itself petrified and my heart almost ached with the thought of how many flawless walls of glass had spiraled and spooled their tubes across the cobblestone bottom just for the sake of doing it and not for the pleasure of some lowly human. At night as I would fall asleep and the rain would dust me in my hammock I would watch the networks of lightning that held up the clouds cover this same landscape in a frosting that teased such beauty it was like nature herself was winking at me.
But the first day when we pulled up it was actually dead onshore with nobody out. I was still nursing my rib/diaphragm and wanted to hold out for better conditions until I saw one of my new friends catch a screamer that shot him past a massive crumbling face before it opened up to let him do several turns. I paddled out and watched a similar wave open its jaws after the aforementioned crumble ceased. My friend said a barrel like that was impossible to get without air-dropping. I waited for one that never came and eventually settled for a smaller one that came at a pretty obtuse angle. I was a bit late on the drop which gave me more speed than I needed to do a nice turn that set me up perfectly to race the next section which transitioned into two sweeping carves where I was perfectly catching my momentum at the top and bottom of the face. I straightened out in the channel and was back to shore within 15 minutes of paddling out, ready to kill the rest of the day with nothing at all and that didn’t bother me one bit.
The next day was quite different; offshore and glassy but with the shortest imaginable swell period. I think everyone who paddled out got spit back onto the beach at least once, and I actually saw a guy attempt it four times before making it out, one time getting pushed so far down the beach that when he walked back his friend yelled “Como etsta las flores!?” in reference to the next famous point which was several miles to the west. We actually had surfed that wave the first morning before heading to Mango in the afternoon and I got two phenomenal drops that led to buttery turns on the face (before I either buried the nose or missed the next section). I also was one paddle behind (and thus slightly too slow) making a huge barrel that my friend still called a “proper send,” and for the first time ever I got reverse dropped-in on, where I was up on a wave before I got cut off by a woman who then yelled at me until I got off the wave. Another friend of mine told me that she’s a new mom and doesn’t get to surf often, which I understand, but I was just mad that everyone probably thought I dropped in on her.
But so that day at Mango I was rejected on my first paddle out attempt. It was like paddling in place; a new wall of whitewater was there as soon as I came up from the last one, and it was impossible to make forward progress before the side current sucked me too far from the point to recover. I got some coffee with my friend since we got pushed so far that we ended up in front of a coffee place, and she told me about how she got arrested in Panama after she ditched a trans-Pacific sailing crew when she clued up to the illegal activity going on (I assume smuggling drugs). The captain must have thought she was snitching and framed her, but the judge sympathized with her because she had a similar name, birthday, and look to his daughter, and got her trial to happen only two weeks after she was jailed. She could have disappeared there forever. She also lived on a beach in the Virgin Islands and took her dingy out every morning to sell produce and jewelry to the boats anchored in the bay. I told her every time I start to feel good about myself I meet someone like her. And so we decided to paddle back out and after two minutes she yelled that it was impossible. I said we were fucking making it. Through no skill of my own I was given the slightest window through which to sneak, but my stubborn persistence of paddling gave me the positioning to take advantage of the opening when it came. It was still a long way to go to the peak and my ribs were not quiet about their displeasure with this fact. I could hardly breathe or paddle, but the sound of the rain on the ocean surface was like the slight tumbling of smooth gravel down a glass tube, and the ripples caught the light in the faintest white lines that crisscrossed the obsidian surface like audio waves look to a synesthetic. Besides that tinkling sound it was silent and I was alone, and besides the ripples from the rain the ocean could not have been smoother. I got one excellent drop before the lip flung me from the top of my top turn and pummeled me into the flats; not good enough for my only wave of the day. I suffered through my ribs to stay in position long enough to get one that I honestly don’t remember very well, but I know that when I came off of it it felt like I had earned something more worthwhile than I ever could have guessed by watching from the shore. Perhaps that’s why it was so easy to watch the ocean for the rest of the day.
Thus began the long stretches of time that led to my aforementioned observations as I rested my ribs and watched everyone else surf while I listened to the most reverb-heavy guitar solos I had on my phone. I just watched and watched and reveled in the sheer waste of time because it wasn’t waste; it just was. That night we shared barbecued peliguey (crossbred sheep and goat) and raw sea turtle eggs with some guys who live there and have probably been harvesting said eggs for long before it was illegal, and they certainly were harvesting them in sustainable ways. The moon was completely full and directly over our fire, and they joked that I was becoming Salvadoran after I’d eaten four eggs and four tortillas. There was a bit of a language barrier, but I rode that line straddled by appreciation and greed; they probably don’t get too many gringos willing to slug those eggs like I did, but they also probably don’t get too many who can eat as much as I do.
We decided to stay an extra day to catch a swell that was peaking Monday morning, and the night before we were sitting in the car gathering our stuff to sleep when “Maggot Brain” graced the car screen via Spotify shuffle. The owner of the phone agreed with me that it was the best song ever, and my other friend was happy to be initiated. I can’t say I could have ever guessed that I’d listen to that song while brushing my teeth in a car in rural El Salvador, but I also can’t say I’d have been upset if I knew that beforehand. It was as glorious as always, and ever since my last drug-riddled listen in Philadelphia pre-covid, I decided I would never willingly play that song again and await for it to enter my life when the time was right. Apparently this was one of them, and I see it as a sort of signpost of the types of people and places I’m starting to associate with: the good ones. I have a similar rule with “Time,” and of course the other day I felt like listening to it and the universe would’t let me break my own rule; the person with whom I share a Spotify account was already using it. Someone played it on the way to Las Flores that first morning when we were still driving in the early morning dark and I announced that that song is my litmus test for if I’m making the most of my life; if I am, it makes me feel good, if not, it makes me feel bad:
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
Oh how nice it felt to know that wasn’t me and that the people I was with who were all singing along felt glad about the same thing.
So when the morning came of the swell and my ribs were healed enough to be eager I did not stop myself from feeling that way. I started off with probably the worst session of my life, either taking off too deep, too late, or burying the rail on the one wave I did actually get into after I didn’t stall enough for the barrel my friend told me to go for. I switched boards from my alter-ego to my shadow; the board that can take any drop and hold any face. I got one warm-up and I literally felt myself improve; I was dragging both of my hands and thought to myself “I’d have better balance if I did this” and I put all of my rear weight on the inside of my back foot and turned my knee in so that all of my mass was over the center of the board as opposed to poop-stancing it and wasting so much mass and direction. But so after that I paddled twice as deep as anyone and was alone at the deepest possible part of the peak. I was treating it more like a reef pass or a slab, going for the biggest drop on the biggest wave and seeing if I came out. I made more than a few drops that, if I’m being honest, were nothing compared to some epic days I had at the Beachie back in Popoyo. It simply wasn’t as steep, and the odds of it being a closeout were probably 1/10 as opposed to 29/30; much easier to commit to. My moment of glory was for sure the biggest wave of the day which I was propelled with such speed towards the face that the layback I attempted was like taking a baseball bat-sized paintbrush to a virgin canvass and gracing it with the most geometrically perfect arc in one unconscious sweep. It all happened so fast that I had no time to calculate the maneuver at all and even less time to process that I was suddenly careening face-first into the face of the wave. I must have buried the nose (again, which for once I cannot possibly attribute to lack of speed, but it’s time to thin the rails out on a new step-up), and when I came up my friend was in awe of what he had seen, that it was beautiful to see me flying down the face of the wave. The lasting image in my mind is at the end of my bottom turn just as I was thoughtlessly beginning my ascent of the towering face which had a slate-gray hue whose distribution across the entire face was nested in perfect replication in each ripple while a blinding white-hot slash of sunlight cut across it all in the shape of a sail. The sky stretched on forever beyond the lip which created a subtle border between heaven and sea.
Afterwards my friend told me matter-of-factly that I “actually charge,” and the photographer told me that he had some great photos of me. I declined the photos; I know whatever I looked at would replace the image I described above and can never be as visceral, and I told my friend that it’s not like I did anything special but commit. She told me to not be so critical and I told her she’ll get used to my self-hatred. She said she’ll be stoked on my waves for me, and I appreciated that, but such is my particular flavor of sadness.
I drove the whole way home and listened to Neil Young and Freddie Gibbs. My bed here in Zonte was what I was thinking of those nights I tried to ignore the rain in my hammock, and it was the comfort and familiarity I longed for when I was alone out there on the peak while my insides scraped the bare black bottom of my psyche for any way to feel something in the caked residue that was left in me. I was empty. But everything has felt full since then, and Zonte has felt like home since I got back. I surfed at sunset yesterday and did probably 200 duck dives through onshore chop and paddled into three shitty waves. I didn’t care. I was just happy to be out there with my friends in a place where I felt comfortable, and I guess what stuck with me was that I had so quickly reframed my sense of comfort around this place. That’s a skill I wouldn’t trade for anything.